From The Australian: December 12, 2002.
FRESH reports of black panthers roaming Victoria's countryside killing cattle have emerged after a Gippsland dairy farmer has claimed up to 200 cows on his farm had been mauled. Ron Jones said the latest casualty - a Friesian cow - had its jaw torn away and its ear and brain eaten. "They go in through the ear and eat the brain out, the back end of the cow has been eaten out and the bag (udder) area is eaten out," Mr Jones told ABC radio. "I've seen about a dozen of them (the cats) now ... when they're sitting on their backsides they're about three foot six (106cm) from the ground up to the top of the head. "When they take off they sort of go in big loping bounds. They cover about 20 feet (6.1 metres) every bound - they're about eight feet (2.44 metres) roughly from the tip of their nose to the end of their tail." Mr Jones said they were too big to be feral cats. "It's definitely a cat the way it moves. When they kill an animal they just lay on it and chew away at it," he said. "Where a dog stands and tears at it and leaves a jagged wound, these wounds are just as though you'd cut the meat out with a carving knife." Debate about the possible existence of panthers or pumas has raged for decades, with sightings reported in several parts of rural Victoria. Explanations include that US servicemen released big cats they kept as mascots or that the creatures escaped from travelling circuses more than 100 years ago. Mr Jones said he had taken a few pot shots at the animals but with no success. Stephan Kaiser, from the Gippsland Department of Primary Industries, said a local wild dog catcher had been sent to Mr Jones' farm. "The dogger supported Mr Jones' view that the injuries seemed inconsistent with a dog attack," he said. DNA testing has been conducted on carcasses in the past to determine if their killers were feline or canine, but Mr Kaiser said it was difficult to get a conclusive reading. He said serious attacks on cattle had increased recently in the Yarram district, and he was considering setting up infra-red cameras to determine the culprit. Feral dogs were in the area but Mr Kaiser said their numbers were far fewer than the plague proportions reported in the eastern highlands. And with his 25 years' experience in dealing with feral animals in the area, did he believe the big cat was out there? "I'm a scientist; I'll wait for the evidence," Mr Kaiser said.
